Friday, September 12, 2008

In 2003 we took a road trip up the coast. We rented a Mustang convertible and drove it from San Diego to Vancouver, ferried over to Victoria, ferried down to Washington to drive to Seattle, then drove over the mountains to Boise, down through Nevada to Reno and back over the mountains to Sacramento, into Napa, and back to San Diego.

It was a lot of fun, and there was a lot of wine involved.

Now that we have Erin we've been missing those kind of footloose vacations. All of our trips in the last year and a half have involved visits to family to one extent or another. But this weekend we are going back to one of our favourite spots from that roadtrip oh so many years ago: Back to Seattle again. We have no family there, so there is no pressure to visit with anyone. We are going with one carry-on and the backpack. No stroller, no carseat, no crib.

It's a bit liberating.

We'll be back on Monday.

But, so you have something to do this weekend (besides, you know, spending time with family or other things that are way less important than reading blogs), I give you a homework assignment: Tell me your worst road trip memory.

I'll start. On the first day we had the convertible we drove out of San Diego, all the way through L.A., through the Grapevine and the central valley to San Jose. With the top down. It was nice and sunny. And I was nice and stupid and didn't wear any sunscreen.

I woke up the next morning with the left side of my body a bright lobster red. I could hardly move. For the next couple of days I was spraying that side down with aloe just so I could hold the steering wheel.

Your turn.

Worst story wins an autographed copy of Stefanie Wilder-Taylor'sNaptime is the New Happy Hour. Well, autographed by me, anyway. I will also annotate it, marking it with the whatever thoughts strike me as I go through it. Stefanie has graciously permitted me to, in effect, deface her art: think of a high school punk tagging the Mona Lisa. She is fantastic.

hm, I guess that would be when Maggie threw up in her brand-new carseat, not once, but TWICE! (on our way to the beach and on the way back.) On the way to the beach was worse- we were stuck in traffic on a bridge so we couldn't pull over to do a clean up. I ended up using a LOT of baby wipes and throwing them in the (thankfully!) empty cooler that was sitting on the backseat. It was very, very gross.

We drove out to Wisconsin to visit family when I was 10. We went up through the lower part of Canada and then came back by way of Indiana (more family). I threw up in every state (and a couple of times in Canada) and to this day, I can't eat bananas, plums or granola bars. Just the sight of them turns my stomach. My family LOVED me that summer!

We decided to take a one-day trip to Jasper. We were four adults (late teens) and a baby. The car only seated three adults and a baby in comfort, so adult #4, who was pouting about not being included, was permitted to join us as long as he sat in the hatch. (It was one of those longer vehicles with the big hatchback that wasn't closed over, so he could stretch out a bit. But he had no control over entering or exiting the vehicle, and needed me to pop the hatch to let him in or out.)

Anyway, we were approaching Edson, in my old beater car, when the Check Engine light came on. We turned off the car to let it cool. We tried filling the radiator with water found in various spots by the side of the road. And we kept driving. In Edson, a full serve gas station attendant tried to fix the problem. If memory serves, he removed the thermostat. We figured the problem was solved, so we kept going.

We were in the middle of nowhere when the light came back on. And we once more tried the same stuff. But our makeshift repairs weren't working out, and we were covering less and less distance each time. And every time we had to stop, I'd invariably forget to pop the hatch and adult #4 would have to bang on the rear windshield to remind me to let him out. We were hoping to just get to Hinton and find someone to fix the car. But it wasn't looking good. With no phones for miles, we couldn't get help.

Eventually, the world's nicest trucker pulled over to help us out. He would try to fix the problem. And then he'd follow us to see if we ran into trouble again. We always did. We got reasonably close to Hinton before we abandoned all hope, and the trucker just drove us the rest of the way.

We got the car towed to a repair shop, where they told us the radiator was corroded and needed to be replaced. So I called my dad, who was a machinist, and asked him to take the radiator out of the old written-off parts car we had in the backyard and send it to us on the Greyhound bus.

Then we had to find accommodations for the night. And that trucker (who really was just the sweetest person in the world) was really worried about all of us and tried to give us cash to cover our expenses while we waited for the car to be fixed. Fortunately, we'd round up enough cash between all of us and our families that we could cope, and we didn't have to take his very generous offer of help. And he got to carry on with his trip.

Anyway, the next day, we got our car and got back on the road. And we made it to Jasper and back fairly uneventfully. But when we got back into town, we exited the vehicle, left the lights on, drained the battery, and had to get a boost later that day.

That would have to be the time in college that my roommate and I decided to drive 4 hours across the state to hear a band that we loved...never mind that neither of us had spent any actual TIME in this city so we didn't know where anything WAS. We drove there, excited that we were going to hear some great music.

We drove around that stupid city for 2 hours trying to find the club. We stopped and asked directions about a dozen times and each time got a different answer. Finally, frustrated and exhausted, we turned around and drove back home, arriving at 5:00 am. (Actually, I did the driving back home while my @#*4& roommate slept in the passenger seat.) It was the worst night ever.

Car trip fun? Um, maybe the joint panic attacks suffered by my husband and I as we drove down Hwy. 101 in a rental van with our then toddler aged boys in the back... It was a black comedy of sweat, some vomit and clenched teeth talk.

My dad was helping me drive my two children (ages 5 and 22 months) and my dog from Connecticut to Texas one summer under, shall we say, less than optimal circumstances. I could only drive at night because of a problem with my eye, and I had to put drops in sixteen times a day, so Dad was behind the wheel most of the time. He was learning to speak Spanish at the time, so our listening options consisted of his language tapes or the Norteno CDs he brought with him. He absolutely refused to let the kids listen to anything, despite my repeated protests that a little Laurie Berkner really would tame the savage beasts.

The worst, though, was when we were driving through St. Louis during rush hour or construction or some other traffic hell, listening to some god-awful Freddy Fender song, and my basset hound just decides she's had enough. As she climbed from the cargo area of my station wagon over the backseat, she got wedged between my son's car seat and the top of the car. There was nowhere to stop, and she had to sit like that, clawing at my son's head and drooling nonstop, for another 15 minutes until we could get her out. My daughter and I were screaming at the dog, my son was crying his head off, the dog was whining, and Tejano music was blaring. Years later, I still don't know how my father and I are still on speaking terms after what I yelled at him.

Later that night, we were about 120 miles from my parents' house when we really should have stopped and found a hotel, but the memory of the hell we'd been through that afternoon was enough to fortify me to make it the rest of the way home while the everyone slept.

On the way back to Connecticut, my little brother rode with me, the kids got to listen to whatever they wanted, and the dog chewed on an endless supply of bones. It was much, much better.

I was eight, maybe seven, when I had to go Number Two very badly and couldn't make it to the bathroom, so I ended up going in a small, plastic Avondale bag (the kind of teeny tiny bag they used to put my mom's Medallions in when I went to the store to buy smokes for her. You know the ones) in the backseat of my mom's car. My childhood best friend, a boy a year younger than me, was there and was horrified.

Now, this did not occur during a road trip - it happened in the A&P parking lot while my mom was shopping - but it is, quite frankly, the worst car-related memory I have. Worse than the time I got a stomach bug and drove home from college, puking uncontrollably, with a large bowl in my lap. Worse than the time I went to the peelers for my best friend's birthday and hit a skunk on the way home. Worse than the blizzard I got stuck in somewhere in Northern Ontario. Worse than the time Dave's Pathfinder experienced a small fire under the hood while we drove with our infant daughter to his mother's for his birthday.

um.i win. we were stuck at the canada/us border for HOURS on our way home from a trip. i had to pee. but bad.and i was wearing lululemons that totally push in on the pee-button (shut up, pretend you don't know what that is...)

so...because there was nowhere to go. we were on a FREAKING bridge...i flashed my naked behind to the car behind us and peed...in front of my children...into a McDonald's coffee cup.

my roommate and i drove from LA to Seattle for Thanksgiving. Left Wednesday, got there 22 hours later for turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie. slept friday. saturday woke and drove back to LA from Seattle.

t-shirt on a mini-mart attendant in NorCal:"spotted owl taste like fried chicken."

hmmm worst road trip ever? Moving cross country from WA state to upstate NY with 2 kids a cat, a dog and two cars. I followed DH in car #2. the RELIABLE car. It should be said, since you don't know me very well, that I have LESS THAN ZERO sense of direction. In fact, my lack of sense of direction is LEGENDARY within the circles of people who know me. You see where this is going don't you?

Our trip called for a stop in TX for my 2 sons to play in a national chess tournament. DH didn't feel the need to use his turn signal at one point to alert me that he was getting off the interstate. I wasn't able to make the exit. This was back before cell phones were prevalent. I got off at the next exit, but by then our walkie talkies were out of range, not that it mattered because rather than be helpful all DH was doing anyway was cursing me for not driving like an ass like he was and not getting off the exit. I had one kid with me and all the pets. I drove for 45 minutes till I found a pay phone. I called my parents whom he had called to give directions to me so we could meet up again. After several phone calls back and forth and me crying into the phone with an operator because I had run out of money I sobbed into the phone "I HATE TEXAS!". 2 more hours later, DH and I were reunited in a convenience store parking lot. He was still cursing, I was still crying. I was so mad I locked myself in my car and wouldn't speak to him for hours until we finally ended up having to stay the night there.

The next day we continued our journey after a hearty meal and a good nights sleep. My car died (remember this was the reliable one) in a little town called Plain View Texas. Died. We had to have it towed ACROSS THE STREET *literally* and paid $50. We could have stopped traffic and pushed it across the street for free, but apparently that's frowned upon..whatever. The repair shop at the dealership didn't have the part needed to fix my car. I had to stay overnight while DH and the kids continued on to the chess tournament. I had the pets with me. Might I add, I had to SNEAK them into the hotel I stayed at because..No pets allowed!. The next day, I had to continue on to the city where the chess tournament was all by myself. Well..with my dog and cat. The air conditioning broke. Did I mention yet that this was Texas? In the summer? And I'm not so good with the directions? I finally made it, where we boarded our pets for a couple of days because the hotel where the tournament was hosted didn't allow pets either.

What could make this story worse you ask? Every town from Plain View through Grapevine, to the city where the tournament was held was DRY!

What kind of sick puppies don't let you drink after a trip like that?

Boy did that bring back memories! My favorite joke to tell when relating that story is when I tell everyone that my car broke down right out in Plain View Texas!

Easily the worst road trip I've ever been on was an 18 hour drive from San Jose to Washington state. We had made the trip up as a team of 3 drivers going non-stop. The drive up was uneventful until the last hour when we got caught just behind what turned out to be a fatality accident on the highway. So there we sat for a couple of hours. It wasn't that bad but took quite a awhile as they brought in the life flight helicopter to take the poor soul to the nearest hospital then had to clear the highway.

On the return trip Driver #1 got a speeding ticket in Washington. Driver #2 got a speeding ticket in Oregon. At that point I took over getting us from Oregon back to San Jose. I didn't get any tickets but my feet were killing me. Unbeknownst to me I had stress fractured both of my feet while in Washington. So I had to drive back to California for about 7 hours with broken feet.

Two trips to the podiatrist one misdiagnosis and working and walking on them another week after I returned home before they ordered a bone scan and made the proper diagnosis. Have never done that particular drive again. Southwest makes it too easy to fly.

I thought I had everyone beat but neither of my stories involve bowel movements and for some reason, I think those might be hard to beat. But, I'll give it a whirl..I'll try to be brief..hahahaha (do you guys know who you are messing with? brief? hahhaah)

I was 24'ish. Fresh out of a divorce. Skinny enough for a bikini, with 4 buddies who loved the beach as much as I did. Every other weekend we were making the trip from Birmingham, Alabama to Panama City Beach, Florida (you will soon learn why we say, what happens in PCB stays in PCB).

I was dealing with serious endometriosis issues and was taking lupron injections. They caused me to be menopausal. They also prevented me from tanning or burning. It didn't however keep my friends from getting some wicked sun burns. They were using sun screen, I was stupid and using accelerator (yes, I'm paying for that now).

Anyway, they would get so sun burned that they couldn't even put underwear on by Sunday. Add to that the hang-overs that we were sporting by Sunday morning and my menopausal hot flashes and.........

I was riding in a Honda Civic with 4 other girls. All four of them were sun burned bad. They wanted the heat on. I was sitting in the back in the middle and just the heat off of the two girls on each side of me was enough to keep me sweating (hot flashes plus car heat plus human being heat).

So, somewhere South of Montgomery, AL, we spotted a blonde hunk in a Porsche'. T-top Porshe' mind you. He pulled over in Montgomery, I had the driver pull over behind him where I asked him where he was headed (Huntsville) and could I ride to B'ham with him. He said "sure" and told me to get a jacket. Everyone started laughing. He insisted I was going to need a light jacket b/c the t-tops would make me cold.

I argued. I didn't get a jacket and I didn't get cold. Turns out this guy was some kind of Secret Service dude that was stationed at the base in Huntsville. At least I picked someone who wasn't going to murder me. We dated for about 3 months after that.

Second story, same 4 girls, we rent a van to go to New Orleans to stay and then drove into Baton Rouge for the Alabama vs LSU football game. We divided the driving time up, 1 hour each, no one had to drive all the way there.

The plan was to drive the same way back. However, muah had such a hang-over on Sunday morning that I couldn't even go inside the Hard Rock Cafe' to eat nor could I enjoy a flea market. I passed out about noon in the van while they were shopping and they woke me up when we got back to Birmingham sometime around midnight.

See, neither of those can beat poop stories. And, the only one that I have close to that was when I saw Garth Brooks in concert. We drank (with a designated driver) for about 3 hours before we left for the hour and half drive. We got stuck in traffic about 2 miles out, friend (who was sitting to my left in story above that involved Army guy) had to pee. She tried to use a beer bottle. You can figure that one out...eh?

I have some really good ones. But topping the list is one in which I was driving home in the morning, after a long night of drinking with a friend, and to make a long story short, was arrested for a dooey. The details are, of course, inappropriate on this blog. But if you can reconstruct them on your own, I win the prize.

It would have to be the time that my mother drove all of us kids to Missouri to visit family. she brought orange juice in a can for lunch, and it was hot. I hated the metallic taste and balked at drinking it, but she insisted. So I sucked it down in a hurry, because if I didn't I was going to be left on the side of the road.

Shortly after lunch, she told me that I could lay down on the floor to take a nap. We had removed a seat from the van, in order to have more room, and so I watched the road through the bolt hole on the floor. We went up a mountain, down a mountain, up a mountain and I puked the hot oj up all over the interior of the van.

Heading back from the beach, we put the top down. I must have had some water in my left ear, from swimming. By the time we got back to the condo, my ear was throbbing. By the next morning, I was in serious pain. Just in time for our planned 2-day trip on the famous Road to Hana and back.

So before hitting the road, we stopped at the local emergent care facility, where the doctor diagnosed an ear infection and prescribed antibiotics and something to numb the pain. Off to Hana!

Everything was going pretty well, until late afternoon. On a tip from my cousin the guide book author, we stopped at an unmarked head of a trail that involved a good deal of trespassing on private property to get to a scenic and secluded waterfall. Great hike. Except for the part where I got bit by some kind of spider on the way back to the car. Right below the left eyebrow.

By the time I got into the car, my eyebrow area was swelling. By the time we got into Hana an hour later, the whole left side of my face was swelling. By dinner time, my left eye was swollen shut.

So we called the town doctor. At home. She came out to the "medical center" and prescribed more antiobiotics. The next day, the swelling not having gone down, we went back to the medical center to see her again. This time, she prescribed steroids. They seemed to do the trick.

I'm from Texas (currently in self-imposed exile--or would that be liberation?), and I'd like to apologize on behalf of my state. I wish I could say that your experience was just a fluke, but I've been to Plain View, TX.

i take a couple week long road trip at least once a year, so i have many stories to tell. As far as the worst, it was a trip to Mexico: Eugene-LA-Lake Havasu-Mexico (which involved lying our way through immigration to get back in the US... as my ex was not a citizen, but hey, it worked!)-San Diego-LA (where my car broke down in Compton and me, a lil blonde and blue eyed white girl, had to walk the streets looking for a mechanic)-North of LA (where my car proceeded to die TWICE while on the freeway)-Eugene. Of course this was 10 days of only me driving in an obviously unreliable car. Involving car sleeping, some stomach issues from Mexico, and every thing in between. In the end, it provided great memories though. However, note that I said EX ;)

Our last one was the worst! We drove 3 hours to spend the day at the beach, which Tessa *hated* with a passion, then drove 3 hours back, the same day. The next morning I woke up terribly sun-burned because I used only dark tanning oil. Did you know I'm very very pale? Yeah.

Noah is just as pale, and even though I put tons of water-proof sunscreen on him, he was SO burned. Especially his face. Except for his freckles, so his skin was all puffed out around the freckles. He was pitiful.

After I gave him some Motrin, we packed up the van and headed to Atlanta, which is about 4 hours away. We spent 3 days in Atlanta, and the kids fought and complained the ENTIRE time. And I spent the time worrying someone was going to send a cop over to us because of Noah's poor face.

(BTW I think it was the combination of sun and salt water that had him in such bad shape!)

The day after my boyfriend's senior prom I had to go to my brother's soccer tournament with my family. It was three hours away and I was insanely hungover.

At one point I was throwing up into a plastic bag and my brother was screaming with his head out the window while my Dad said things like "The only thing that would make this better is if we had a clear bag."

Mine would have to be when my husband and I were first married and we couldn't afford airfare from Texas to Atlanta so we drove. Couldn't afford plays in heavily here as we were young and decided our best route to increase our gas money would be to gamble in Shreveport on the way. I'm sure you know, this didn't work out and I knew it too when hubs said "wanna see how to play black jack?" and he put down one of our last 20's. Two cards later...bye bye 20. He says, want to see it again? Um, no.Had reservations at an at least presentable hotel, discovered after way too many free drinks we had lost count of our money and could no longer afford the original hotel....so we checked into a Motel 6...where a one armed man WITH A HOOK took our money through a sliding glass door giving us access to the room where the National Cockroach Races were being held. At least we didn't pay extra for that. Slept fully clothed on bed covered with tiny towels so as not to make contact with the stain left from the human sacrifice that had happended the night before. Woke next morning with food poisoning and a hangover and the remainder of the drive to Georgia to see the inlaws. Oh...and we got stuck in a hurricane evactution on the way home.Makes me want to be young again. I'm thinking this may have to be a new post.

I drove HOURS in what was supposed to be a two hour trip through flood-ravaged Iowa, on roads littered with detours so extreme I could make neither head nor tails of them, completely unable to read a map (which makes road trips precarious at best, nerve wracking at worse, and brands me as lame all the way around), armed with a lone copy of Prince's "Diamonds and Pearls" cassette as my soundtrack, in the days before I had a cell phone to alert anyone, just to get to my then-boyfriend so we could finally profess our love to each other in person. The trip involved no vomiting or release of any other bodily fluids, just simply the pouring out of my heart to a man who would then break it three months later.

Being my father's daughter I lack the ability to tell my story as a comment so I decided to write it up in my blog. That and the story just cannot be told without the picture that accompanies it. If you want to check it out here's the url: http://microblogologist.blogspot.com/2008/09/worst-road-trip-ever.html

ok here it is, New Mexican desert, in an RV that only fits 5 with 12 people in it, someone turned on the broiler, that heat got above 105 in that RV worst couple hours of my life, it was so hot and nobody knew what was going on lol. it was a really fun trip though, Miami to LA. Hey I found a site that you should post your story on, its called baraaza.com!

Summer 1999. Big Bean was in Dallas for six weeks of training. I rented a small car to make the three-hour trip, because my car was old and not likely to make it.

Turns out, small cars also come with small gas tanks. Did you know that? I didn't. Until I ran out, about halfway there, at least an hour away from everything. With my dog. In 100+ degree temps.

Had to walk to the nearest gas station. And back. Hauling a gas can.

Made it to Dallas, finally, followed the directions I was given. No Big Bean. Traced my steps. No Big Bean. Tried to call. No Big Bean.

These were the pre-cell phone days so I had to use a pay phone. A very creepy man stood a little too close to me with bad breath while I called from the McDonald's. I freaked out and ran to the car. Found another pay phone.

Stuck in a volkswagen van. On the side of the road on Interstate I-90. Somewhere in Montana or Idaho. Spent the night there. Hoping we wouldn't get hit by sleepy tractor trailer driver in the middle of the night.

For me, I think it was when we went to Vermont. Keep in mind that we are from Switzerland, which is tiny, so driving places there is like driving to the closest mall here (depending on where you live). Basel is only 1 hour away from Zurich. But I digress.

Our worst road trip was when we went to Vermont. Having heard numerous times that people from New York go to Vermont for long weekends to chill, hike and generally enjoy the great outdoors, I suggested we do that too. We had moved here from Switzerland about 10 months earlier and had only driven to Boston (in February - another poorly-planned road trip). Anyway, you know how children always ask "are we there yet?"; that's exactly what I was like for the whole trip. It seemed to me that most of the weekend was spent driving on roads that extended along huge forests, with no sign of civilization to be seen for hours on end. We did manage to visit two cute towns and some lovely but in-the-middle-of-nowhere things like a farmer's market and our inn, but when I look at the balance of the weekend, the whole trip was one big long boring drive with nothing to see but trees.

On the way back, we all had to pee and kept saying "we'll go at the next rest stop" except there aren't any. None. We had to pick between stopping to "go" in the bushes (there were plenty, believe me) or go quite a bit off route (Poughkeepsie) to find a rest stop. Given my hate for public restrooms, the availability of coffee was the only thing that tipped the decision in favor of the off-route gas station. That, and the fact that we wanted to fill the car up, just to make sure we'd get home. Because if the car stopped on the way back home from Vermont, we were really screwed. Have I mentioned there was NOTHING?

Seriously. Lovely tiny towns (though few and far between), great maple syrup, but Vermont was totally not worth the drive.

Fuck, I totally forgot about the time as a teenager that I went with some schoolmates to someone's house on the coast. We traveled by bus. Had fun: went to the beach, got drunk, threw up, felt better, went dancing. The day after, we were supposed to get back home on the bus but we waited at the wrong spot and missed it. Didn't want to hitchhike and didn't want to tell my parents what happened for fear they wouldn't let me do it again, so I called and told them we missed the bus but were staying at a friend's aunt's place. The boys hitch-hiked home. Two of the girls really went to the aunt's house. Which left 4 more of us stranded. We went looking for a place to stay, like maybe someone who would let us sleep on their couch or something. We found this guy, also a teenager like us, and he was a horny teenager so the prospect of having 4 girls spend the night at his house was very appealing, so he convinced his mom to let us stay. We hung out, went for a walk, and then he tried to kiss me. I let him, and we ended up making out - he wasn't ugly or anything, but I don't know if I would have let him do that if I wasn't concerned that he might lock us out of his house if I said no. Oh, stop looking at me like that. I wasn't a slutty teenager. I just had to take one for the team.

I know this sounds like a toned down version of American Pie, but it really happened.

Less then one month ago, I drove with my boyfriend to LA where he would be leaving me for 2 years to attend the AFI. And he proceeded to BREAK UP WITH ME after almost 10 years together in Utah, with 2 days left on our trip. BEAT THAT!